Bad Science Category

This one smacks of a huge wind up, but if it isn’t it is an amzing story. Apparently scientists have discovered a jellyfish that, in the words of one Noel Gallagher, can live forever.

The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish can apparently cycle from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again. Thsi means that there may be no natural limit to its life span.

According to Yahoo the key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.

So, can the process of the turritopsis nutricula be copied by humans? What about natural predators. It is fine to be able to live forever, but not if your chances of ending up on another animal’s dinner plate are very high.

Finally will Hollywood star be injecting turritopsis nutricula serum soon? We need to be told.

SCIENTISTS from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are among us.

Armed with swabs, they wipe 409 people at bus and train stations in five major cities in England and Wales.

Before the results are sent to Jeremy Kyle, the boffins note that the further north they went, the more often they found commuters with faecal bacteria on their hands.

The further north go, the shittier it gets. Fact. The further north you go, the less afraid people are to get their hands dirty. Fact. In Scotland, people call hands “Wipers” and wipe their hands on cloth to give it its distinct tartan design and texture.

BEN Goldacre sees hoq the Mail, like all good middle-class sods, has it every way it can get it:

I am Health Book Of The Week in the Daily Mail (and after all the mean things I’ve said about them). To me this says a great deal about the strangeness of the Daily Mail project – barrages of nonsense, interspersed with occasional moments of incongruous clarity. This phenomenon, for me, reached its pinnacle in their front page article on how miracle pixie dust made a man’s finger grow back. You will remember that this story was nonsense. After all the front page excitement, hidden away at the very end of their article, was a quote from someone who actually knew about this stuff, who said, quite simply, that the papers entire front page story was all cock. Brilliant, strange, and oddly endearing.

Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves. Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.

“I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said.

The first-ever scientific study into the health effects of global warming on the Dutch population says it will lead to hundreds of additional deaths. Thousands of additional people are expected to develop skin cancer or contract Lyme’s disease after tick bites.

INTRODUCING the Polar Defense Project: “We need to show the world what is happening in the Arctic due to global warming and environmental degradation…”

It’s the adventure of Lewis Gordon Pugh, a man who is “quickly becoming a Voice of the Arctic”.

He “will kayak from the Island of Spitsbergen (in northern Europe) across the Arctic Ocean, into the Arctic ice pack, and as close to the North Pole as possible. The journey, across some of the most dangerous seas in the world, is scheduled to depart on the 30th of August. The expedition will highlight how thin the sea ice has become in recent years.”

He will not be alone. Lewis Gordon Pugh will be be backed by a “support” vessel, one powered by, er, fossil fuels.

Car dealer Mark Miller wanted to do pretty much the same thing on a bigger scale. He collects rainwater on the roof of his new building, stores it in a cistern and hopes to clean cars with it in a new, water-efficient car wash. But without a valid water right, state officials say he can’t legally divert rainwater. “I was surprised. We thought it was our water,” Miller said.

“OVER ONE-THIRD OF FORMER AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS HAD SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH MEN, STUDY CLAIMS”

Indeed…

A study of former high-school American Football players has found that more than a third said they had had sexual relations with other men.

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.

The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead.

When Michael Mann delivers his latest attempt to prove his “hockey stick”, cheer-leaders such as Richard Black, Environment correspondent for the BBC News website, roll over, wave their legs in the air and utter admiring gurgles, offering the immortal phrase: “A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 ‘hockey stick’ graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct.”

Black clearly has neither the wit nor integrity to postulate that a so-called scientist who is already a three-time loser is not going to get it right on his fourth attempt and that, in pursuit of his mystic goal of proving that the world is warmer now than it has ever been – at least, in the last 1300 years – that he might be a tad biased.

Not that Black is alone of course. The warmist groupies on The Daily Telegraph are quick to follow in the wake of the Beeb, pronouncing: “Past decade hottest for 1300 years in northern hemisphere”, trotting out the unexpurgated doctrine of the sainted Mann, who sits at the right hand of Gore.

BEN Goldacre looks at how big phama invents new ilnesses to sell new drugs:

In 2007 the British Medical Journal published a large, well-conducted, randomised controlled trial, performed at lots of different locations, run by publicly funded scientists, that delivered a strikingly positive result: it showed that one treatment could significantly improve children’s antisocial behaviour. The treatment was entirely safe, and the study was even accompanied by a very compelling cost-effectiveness analysis.

Did this story get reported as front-page news in the Daily Mail, natural home of miracle cures (and sinister hidden scares)? Was it followed up on the health pages, with an accompanying photo feature, describing one child’s miraculous recovery, and an interview with an attractive happy mother with whom we could all identify?

No. This story was unanimously ignored by the entire British news media, despite their preoccupation with antisocial behaviour, school performance and miracle cures, for one very simple reason: the research was not about a pill. It was about a cheap, practical parenting programme.

Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions—such as blocking out the sun—to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today.

Block out the sun… We need fat pople now! Or a big ball of rock with a flag on it…

THEPolicy Exchange, a “centre right” think tank, has suggested in a new report that people in Liverpool and some other places in the north should abandon their cities, which are “beyond revival”, and move down south.

While that is undoubtedly a daft suggestion aimed at stirring up controversy, the fact remains that Liverpool is a city in a place where, in the 21st century at least, nobody really needs a city. I love Liverpool (some of my close relatives are Scousers) but it’s out on a limb and can’t compete with Manchester. Until the day when the docks make a comeback, that isn’t going to change.

As the report’s co-author, Dr Tim Leunig of the London School of Economics puts it:

People in Liverpool are better off than ever before. But they have only got better off at the same rate as the rest of the country, so Liverpool is not catching up with London or the south east. It is not because people [in Liverpool] are lazy or feckless. It is because Liverpool is less well-placed to do business. The chance of Liverpool catching up with the UK average in the foreseeable future is close to zero.

Predictably, the Liverpool Echo doesn’t quite see things that way. Grabbing enthusiastically at the bait, it dismisses the “boffin” and focuses on Liverpool’s new shopping centre (which, incidentally, lost its developer £190m before it opened), concert arena, cruise liner terminal and “Capital of Culture-led rebirth”.

ALL hail the environmentally friendly bombs. Know that after everyone has been blown to smithereens, the planet can live on:

New explosives could be more powerful and safer to handle than TNT and other conventional explosives and would also be more environmentally friendly.

TNT, RDX and other explosives commonly used in military and industrial applications often generate toxic gases upon detonation that pollute the environment. Moreover, the explosives themselves are toxic and can find their way into the environment due to incomplete detonation and as unexploded ordnance. They are also extremely dangerous to handle, as they are highly sensitive to physical shock, such as hard impacts and electric sparks.

To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do.

THE summer is here, and with comes the seasonal tales of shark stories. But Anorak detects a sinister twist:

DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Damien Hirst auction expected to fetch £65 million – An auction of new works by Damien Hirst – including a pickled zebra, a unicorn and a calf with 18-carat gold hooves – is expected to fetch over £65 million…”

Hirst will also present a pickled tiger shark (£4 million – £6 million), zebra (£2 million – £3 million) and ‘unicorn’ (£2 million – £3 million) – the latter is a foal with a resin horn. All are new works created this year.